Sink & Cyc Backstage Tour

Producer Tracy-Lynn was first hired on with Metro as their Scenic Painter over 7 seasons ago. The first time she ever set eyes on the sink that was to be her brushes cleaning place at the theatre she had to do a double take – That sink has seen well over 50 years of floor mopping, prop dishwashing, water bottle filling and brush and roller washing. Age has not been kind to this old friend. A backstage sink has many daily, weekly and monthly duties within any theatre and at Metro it has done more than its fair share of the workload. We no longer wash anything in it – nothing can be trusted to come out cleaner then when it went in; we hardly use it at all anymore for anything but filling buckets to mop the floor as it has draining issues and leaves a peculiar scent behind to which Tracy is now nose-blind to.

Metro’s Cyclorama is also in a sad state of affairs. A Cyc is often one of the most revered pieces of drapery in a theatre space. It is flexible in so many ways and a corner stone of many different types of theatre. It can become a sky, it can be used to project shapes, light and images against and it can change from flat to a curved shape to suggest endless space. A staunch white, Technical Directors around the world fight tooth and nail to keep dirty hands from touching it or stray set pieces from tearing it. Having only replaced Metro’s original cyclorama once at some point in the late 70s past and present Technical Directors have cared endlessly for ours, wiping off marks, temporarily attempting to fix small tears and pondering if it’s possible to bleach it back to its former white glory – all to no avail. It’s time to let this one rest.

Jon MacIntyre takes us on a tour to see these items first hand during a Facebook Live Stream promoting the #WarmHeartsVarietyShow that we put together with the help of our community to raise finds for these much needed items.